The Devil in a Forest

James Wynn · 24 Jun 2009, 22:48 · from 2009-June.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:48:14 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Devil in a Forest
In-Reply-To: <8646.67.142.130.35.1245746275.squirrel at brunians.org>
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	<8646.67.142.130.35.1245746275.squirrel at brunians.org>
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Michael Straight:
>>I think Wolfe is more interested in that sort of exploration
>> of the nature of evil than he is in making some sort of political
>> statement.

Josh:
> As interested. It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping. I really like TDiaF 
> also.

That's pretty funny, Josh.

I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. I was expecting something along 
the level of "Pandora" quality. When I finished it, I considered it solid 
piece, but nothing of much depth. But as I discussed it, I began to 
appreciate it much more. The characters are iconic with each having his own 
"space". Very Dickensian. And as I said, it would be thick-headed to say the 
novel is "about" this or that. Part of my low(er) opinion of it was that I 
didn't think the political angle was very subtle at all. After talking to 
people about it, I came to the opposite conclusion. Yeah, it's about the 
corrupting power of greed and the human susceptibility to venality. But 
those evils are dressed in the idea of "robbing from the rich to give to the 
poor". And re-distribution of wealth is a major political issue. You can't 
really escape that theme in an homage to the Robin Hood story (which this 
is, and a quite deft one). The sad thing is that I'm probably spoiling the 
novel for some people, at least, by pointing out that there *is* a political 
statement in there. Fortunately, there seems to be more than enough 
deniability in the work for readers to ignore me as a crank and enjoy the 
novel for all its other attributes.

J.

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